In a real-world video streaming scenario (e.g., teleconference and telepresence) most users have a static video camera which captures a video scene and streams it to remote participants or receivers over a network. The video scene captured by the video camera includes specific regions or objects of interest (called foreground objects) and background objects. In typical scenarios, people or human subjects in the scene constitute the foreground objects. The background objects include objects, such as walls, book shelves, desk or table surface, curtains, furniture and so on. For reasons of privacy, security, network bandwidth conservation or performance optimality, the user may desire to remove the background objects in the video without altering the existing arrangement in the scene.
In such scenarios, generally, the background objects can be replaced, with any other image/video image, using techniques, such as blue screen imaging and chroma keying. However, these techniques use a physical monochromatic background screen mounted behind the foreground objects (often the user) whose background objects are to be removed and are therefore restrictive for usage in normal user ambient environments. One well known example of the use of the blue screen imaging is a TV weatherperson superimposed over a video view of a weather map. Thus, in a generic, live video streaming scenario, the user may not be able to use these techniques as the physical monochromatic background screen is an impractical and cumbersome pre-requisite.
The drawings described herein are for illustration purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure in any way.